Machine Learning Applied to the Detection of Mycotoxin in Food: A Review

Mycotoxins are a group of naturally occurring, toxic chemical compounds produced by certain species of moulds (fungi), during growth on various crops and foodstuffs, including cereals, nuts, spices and dairy products (The World Health Organization (WHO), 2023). The ingestion of certain mycotoxins has been linked to a range of harmful health impacts on both humans and animals, from short-term poisoning to long-term consequences such as liver cancer, and in some cases, death (Mavrommatis et al., 2021; Marroquín-Cardona et al., 2014; Liu and Wu, 2010). Mycotoxins are secondary metabolites (that is, compounds produced by an organism that are not essential for its primary life processes) and are often produced during the pre-harvest, harvest, and storage phases under favourable conditions of humidity and temperature (Marroquín-Cardona et al., 2014; Van der Fels-Klerx et al., 2022). The most prevalent mycotoxins include aflatoxins, tricothecenes, fumonisins, zearalenones, ochratoxins and patulin, and are produced by certain plant-pathogenic species of Aspergillus, Fusarium, and Penicillium (Tola and Kebede, 2016). Mycotoxin contamination in crop products has been found to vary significantly across different geographical locations and is influenced by annual weather conditions (Logrieco et al., 2021; Leggieri et al., 2020).